Voicemail systems allow a caller to leave a voice message if the desired recipient is unavailable. Traditional voicemail systems (referred to herein as plain old voicemail or POVM) allow a subscriber to place a call to a voicemail system to access messages stored in his or her voicemail box. This is done through a telephone user interface (TUI) that facilitates interaction between the subscriber and the voicemail system. The TUI provides functions for the subscriber to listen to messages, skip messages, delete messages, and save messages. The TUI also provides functions for the subscriber to set a voicemail greeting, record a voicemail greeting, record a name, and set/change a password.
A subscriber with multiple voicemail messages is required to listen to, skip, delete, or save each message while reviewing the voicemail box. This is time consuming and can be frustrating for the subscriber in situations where an important message has been deposited, requiring the subscriber to listen to, skip, delete or save each message in search of the important message.
To help reduce the need to search through multiple messages, various improved voicemail systems have been developed that allow messages to be stored based on a priority scheme to increase the efficiency of listening to voicemail messages. Often, these systems use an identifier, such as a telephone number of the caller, to identify a priority and position the voicemail messages in order based on the assigned priorities. When the recipient accesses the voicemail system to acquire voicemail messages, the recipient is presented with each voicemail message in order of the priority or importance to the recipient. This reduces unwanted listening or skipping through multiple voicemail messages to find an important message. However, an important message can easily be relegated to a position of low importance if the subscriber has not previously set the priority for the caller. In this system, the priority for an incoming voicemail message is determined directly by the telephone number associated with the caller.
The aforementioned systems fail to allow a subscriber to select the exact voicemail message the subscriber would like to hear. Further, the aforementioned systems require the use of a TUI to access the voicemail system. Still further, these systems merely notify a subscriber of a pending voicemail message with a message waiting indicator (MWI) and require that the subscriber access the voicemail system to retrieve the pending message(s).